Sarah Gambito

Sonogram

I dreamed my mother collapsed inside of me
and nothing else was true.
I was still and I cupped my heart’s stream
into my heart’s mouth and
I could do nothing.
This is to say I was a child.
Casting nets of silver so you feel
the feeling of

this is my job: the child is living
and can be named for a dog.
A dog would be pure black emotion.
A terrycloth terror we’ll rub on our bodies
and hold onto for fear of

she was a child. She was a child.
And in her child she felt her mother’s sadness.
I want to her to feel it
for how can I touch her, the beatitude, the velvet veto.
What hasn’t happened yet.
What it feels like to hold onto the stairs for help.

That’s every story—medea plumming candle.
Dead-rot dog
finking across the need to know.

As I stand in front of the “victim.”
She’s garrulous as we practice on the child
on her dovetail joints that despite everything
thrill and thrill and thrill.